


(look into your eyes) The Sky's The Limit

by PotterheadAvengerDemigod



Series: my heart on your skin [2]
Category: DC Animated Universe, DCU (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bruce Wayne is a Good Dad, Child Neglect, Cute, Dad Bruce Wayne, DaddyBats, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, For Science!, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Light Angst, M/M, Platonic Soulmates, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Wally West is a nerd, Wally's Flash obssession, Wally's POV, a lil bit of - Freeform, implied - Freeform, which is pretty much Wally's motto in life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 00:52:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11817774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PotterheadAvengerDemigod/pseuds/PotterheadAvengerDemigod
Summary: It isn’t exactly fun, trying to pick up a language that no one around him speaks, but it’s worth it when he looks down one day and finds that he can understand exactly what his soulmate’s most prominent wishes are./OR/ Wally's POV of the events of If There's A Reason (I'm by his side).





	(look into your eyes) The Sky's The Limit

**Author's Note:**

> So I got a couple of comments about a sequel and/or Wally's POV, so here it is! I just want to thank all of you for being so amazingly supportive of If There's A Reason (I'm by his side), the response I got to the fic was so great, thanks so much for reading it! I hope y'all enjoy this one just as much!

It takes Wally the better part of three years and a whole host of soulmate language learning courses to learn how to speak and read Romani fluently enough to understand the words written across his heart.

It isn’t exactly fun, trying to pick up a language that no one around him speaks, not to mention one that’s so rare that it makes finding soulmate language courses near impossible. But it’s worth it when he looks down one day and finds that yes, he can understand exactly what his soulmate’s most prominent wishes are.

His soulmate’s dreams stay the same for the better part of five years, three little words in a language no one around him can read, but his Mum identifies as Romani after hours of hard searches.

 _“Zbura, pasăre mică,”_ Wally’s first words read, and when Wally’s six he finally understands enough of the foreign language to say those words out loud.

“Fly, little bird,” he reads, small fingers gently tracing the black lines, and he wonders what his soulmate would be like. Smaller than him, imaginative, but strong-willed? Or wide-eyed and dreamy, tall and funny? He thinks if his soulmate yearns to fly so much then “little bird” is a nickname that he might use one day, after they meet.

When Wally’s seven his words change to _“Suntem atât de norocoși”,_ which Wally takes a while to decipher, but he ultimately figures out that they translate to “we’re so lucky”, and Wally wonders what his soulmate means. Are they lucky because they have soulmates? Are they lucky because their skin isn’t blank like some whose soulmates haven’t got a goal? Or are they just _lucky?_

Either way Wally thinks his soulmate is amazing, and of course he’s lucky.

Wally’s nine when he finds out about the Flash and how he saves everyone in Central City. This is a man who can go faster than the speed of sound, faster than the speed of light, a man who can create tornadoes with a single movement, a man who moves so fast people don’t notice he’s there until he’s already miles away.

Wally starts stockpiling Flash merchandise, Flash band-aids and shirts and stickers and bedsheets, until his room is a veritable treasure trove of red and yellow and lightning bolts, and Wally is _obsessed._

Flash is a creation of science, he knows, and is living, breathing proof that science is awesome and that science can _totally_ beat magic any day.

Wally is nine when he looks down and his words read _“ei cel mai bun”,_ which roughly translates to “They’re the best”, and the rush of fondness that grips him warms his heart, sending him walking on clouds for the rest of the day. He’s not sure what exactly the words have to do with Flash, because he’s almost a hundred percent sure that his obsession has appeared somewhere on his mate’s body, but the words are clearly aimed at him and he loves them.

The words stay that way until Wally’s ten, on a nondescript Saturday evening at exactly seventeen minutes past six, and he’s in his room at Aunt Iris’s house where he stays the weekends, rearranging his charts and graphs on the Flash and contemplating how he feels about Aunt Iris’s new boyfriend Barry when he feels the sharp lance of pain that sears through his chest. It feels like what being stabbed would feel like, he thinks, even though he’s never actually been stabbed before. It burns, sharp and bright and _oh God, it hurts,_ and even though Wally’s chest feels like someone took a blunt knife to it and is slowly skinning him alive, even though he can feel the pain and hurt and misery building up in his chest, the only thing Wally can really think is, _“Please, whoever you are, please, please, please be okay.”_

The area of his skin where his words are imprinted is burning like someone took a red hot blade and began dragging it through his skin, and Wally thinks someone is screaming, he thinks that it could be him, and distantly he hears Aunt Iris and Barry, who’d come over with ice cream and chips and takeout, barging into his room, and he’s never heard Aunt Iris so worried, never heard her so afraid.

Wally feels Aunt Iris’s slim hand come to rest on his back, her arms encircling him as she cautiously maneuvers him to the bed and sit him down, tucking his head into the crook of her neck. Wally’s distantly aware that he’s crying, and he can feel his tears soaking Aunt Iris’s shirt, he can hear her soft whispers trying to comfort him, can see Barry pacing worriedly out of his peripheral vision, and everything is so _bright,_ his senses are going crazy, and it _hurts,_ the lights are too bright even with his face buried in Aunt Iris’s shoulder, and her soft cotton shirt is rough against his cheek, scratchy and almost painful, and even her soothing whispers are like screaming in his ears, and _he just can’t calm down._

Then gentle hands are prying him away from Aunt Iris’s embrace, and _no, don’t let him go, you can’t go,_ but then Aunt Iris’s grip on him is loosening and he feels a warm, calloused palm tilting his head up ever so slightly, sees blue eyes _(too pale, not bright enough, all wrong)_ staring straight into his own, and he distantly recognises Aunt Iris’s boyfriend, before those blue eyes are pulling away from his to gaze over his shoulder, at Aunt Iris, the tiny part of his brain not overwhelmed by utter despair supplies.

“Panic attack,” Barry says, and his voice sounds like it’s coming through a loudspeaker, even though Wally’s pretty sure that the man is speaking at a softer than normal volume. “And maybe mild sensory overload. Soulmate induced, I’d say, judging from how he keeps scratching at his upper left torso. His words are there, I’m presuming?”

Aunt Iris nods silently, her green eyes wide and upset, and Wally thinks he should be trying to focus on something, _anything,_ to stop the clawing, gaping emptiness that’s building in his chest.

Barry’s hands grip his shoulders, and the touch doesn’t hurt quite so much now, all of Wally’s hypersensitivity dying down as abruptly as it’d come, and now everything feels like he’s shrouded in a veil of fog, like he’s walking blind and has cotton in his ears.

“Hey,” Barry’s voice comes, suddenly and almost too soft to parse out, but just commanding enough that Wally can focus on it through the smog. “Hey, Wally, listen to me, come on, kid. Breathe. Breathe with me, come on.”

Wally’s chest feels tight, like he can’t get enough air, like he’s trapped in a vacuum and he’s slowly being compressed into nothingness, but he tries to match Barry’s breathing. His eyes sting, and he thinks there are still tears running down his face, but he tries to take in as deep of a breath as he can, and then slowly exhales, trying desperately to match Barry.

His head is throbbing, and his face and neck feel flushed and hot, like all the blood has rushed to his head and left him disoriented and dizzy, and the burning sense of _loss_ is still aching in his chest, a radiating hopelessness that spreads out and swallows him whole, but as he begins to calm slowly, breathing slowing and muscles slowly, _slowly_ untensing, the ache lessens ever so slightly until it reaches bearable levels, and the pounding in his head decreases until he can finally think again.

Wally slowly backs up until the backs of his knees hit the bed, and he sits heavily, burying his face in his hands. His cheeks are wet, almost soaked, and he knows that the tears are still coming.

“Please be alright,” he mumbles, and honestly, he doesn’t care who’s looking, he just needs to see what his words say. He pulls on the collar of his shirt unceremoniously until it’s tugged off over his head, and then he’s gazing down at those foreign letters over his heart.

_Ei sunt toti mort._

Wally flinches at the words, recoiling and grabbing for his pillow as he hugs it close to his chest.

“They’re all gone,” he murmurs, eyes fixed, unseeing, on the spot where those four words resided, shielded by fabric and cotton. “They’re all dead.”

His soulmate had lost someone, maybe even multiple someones. They were grieving. That explained the hurt Wally was feeling, but he didn’t want to know who his soulmate had lost that had left them so utterly distraught.

It hurt, knowing he couldn’t be there for his soulmate when they needed him.

They were upset, and mourning, and distressed, and he couldn’t comfort them. All he could do was pray that his soulmate could somehow feel the comfort Wally was trying to channel.

He prays that he’s helping. Even if it was just a tiny, miniscule bit, he prays that somehow he’s helping, even if it’s just a bit.

Distantly, he hears Aunt Iris and Barry quietly leaving the room.

A few weeks later Wally startles awake in bed at the sudden rush of rage that courses through his veins, rage that is not his own, and he’s not thinking as his hands tighten into fists and he’s gripping his sheets so tightly he hears them rip.

His words read _“Le voi gâsi. Le voi ucide.”_

Wally, at ten, understandably panics at the murderous statement.

No, no his soulmate can’t become a murderer, if they do they’ll get locked up in prison or maybe they’ll get a death penalty or maybe they’ll die trying to kill that person and then _he’ll never get to meet them._

 _Please, please don’t do something you’ll regret,_ he thinks, and he tries to ignore the fact that his heart is thudding anxiously in his chest, adrenaline flooding his veins and hands trembling.

 _You can’t,_ he thinks. _Please don't leave me alone. Please don’t leave. Please._

Wally doesn’t sleep again that night.

The following months has Wally irritable and trying desperately to act like there’s nothing wrong, but there’s always anger bubbling under his skin, grief chewing away at his insides, emotion that isn’t his own but feels so innately a part of him that he can’t help but wonder just how much worse his soulmate has it.

Do they cry themselves to sleep at night like Wally sometimes feels like doing? Do they bury themselves in whatever work they’re doing, schoolwork or books or whatever hobby they have just to try and _forget?_

Somedays Wally feels numb to all emotion, and on those days he spends the day curled in bed and gently tracing the pale, unblemished skin above his heart.

His words had disappeared a week after the night when Wally had awoken in a murderous rage, and the only thing that keeps Wally from panicking and wondering if his mate is dead is the fact that Wally still gets flashes of emotion that aren’t his.

But Wally’s a blank slate now, pale, freckled skin and nothing else, every inch of his body an even cream tone, no hint of any mark ever existing.

 _It’s okay,_ Wally comforts himself. _They’re just lost, they’ll find their way back one day. I’ll wait for them, like I know they would if it was me._

Then one day Wally looks down and the words have returned, harsh and stark black, standing out against his skin, and Wally’s so _relieved_ that he doesn’t even care that they scream of murder again, he’s just happy that his mate isn’t lost any longer.

 _“El va plăti,”_ they read, sharp, hard lines scrawled across his skin, words that contain so much anger, so much hurt that Wally had never realised three simple words could hold.

And yes, a part of Wally is afraid that his soulmate will end up killing someone and losing themselves again, but mostly he’s just thankful that they’re back.

 _I’ll help them hide the body,_ Wally thinks giddily, and he can’t help the small smile that creeps across his lips.

Wally’s a few months shy of eleven when his words change to _“justiție și răzbunare”,_ and Wally wonders if his soulmate has gotten the revenge they wanted so badly.

He hopes they didn’t do anything reckless.

Wally is eleven and preparing for bed when a flush of _relief-hurt-anger-grief_ floods his body, and his words read _“suntem în siguranță”._

We’re safe.

Wally wonders what exactly his soulmate means, and silently hopes that he isn’t soulmates with a murderer now. He believes he isn’t.

Wally is eleven and his words read _“ei sunt uimitor”,_ and Wally can’t help smiling, even though he can still feel the hurt that’s barely faded. He’s not sure he would call himself amazing, but one thing’s for sure: His soulmate definitely is.

Wally is twelve when he finds out that _Barry is the Flash,_ and holy cow, if dorky, nerdy (but completely awesome) Barry can be awesome and heroic and _the best superhero ever,_ maybe Wally stands a chance too.

Then he talks to Barry -he’s going to be Uncle Barry soon, he proposed to Aunt Iris!- and he finds out how he became the Flash _-science!-_ and Wally makes the decision immediately.

He’s going to recreate the experiment.

If Batman and Green Arrow could have Robin and Speedy then Barry can have a sidekick too, right?

He’ll be Flash Boy- no, Flash Lad! Or Speedo?

Wait, no. Flash Kid?

Kid Flash! Yes!

He’ll be Kid Flash and fight alongside Barry and save the world and he’ll be a superhero and _it’ll be awesome!_

It takes weeks of planning and months of waiting for his efforts to finally come to fruition, and by the time he has the opportunity to carry out his plans it’s almost a year later. He waits until he knows the Flash is away on a Justice League mission and Aunt Iris is busy covering a story in Star City to sneak into Barry’s lab, arranges the chemicals in the exact same formation as they were the night the lightning struck Barry, and the gets out the equipment he needs to artificially concoct a bolt of lightning.

He sets up everything just right, and then hits the lever to trigger the lightning mechanism.

His science rings true, and he watches, fascinated, as the bottles of chemicals shatter, dousing him from head to toe just as the bolt of electricity hits him straight in the chest, and then there’s a flare of pure, sharp agony.

He thinks he screams, then everything goes black.

When Wally wakes, he’s in a stark white room, starched sheets pulled up to his waist and the incessant beeping of machines sounding.

Aunt Iris and Barry are asleep in the room, and Wally takes a brief moment to wonder where his parents are, but chances are they’re working. _(We can’t humour you all the time, Wallace, we have to earn a living to support this family. Grow up, Wallace.)_

Aunt Iris is leaning into Barry’s side, eyes closed and chest rising and falling, and Barry is slumped in his chair, brow furrowed even in sleep and his arm wrapped around Aunt Iris’s waist.

Wally’s only thirteen, but he knows love when he sees it, and he’s never asked if Barry was Aunt Iris’s soulmate, but he thinks they might be.

Maybe that’s why their relationship was so much better than his parents’.

Wally watches the couple for a while before everything comes back to him in a rush, and then Wally finds himself far more interested to know whether or not the experiment worked.

He lifts a hand, staring at it even as he focuses hard. Can he-

His hand doesn’t even move.

No. No, please, it can’t be. It didn’t work. All those weeks of planning, months of subtly picking Barry’s brains, all that effort.

For nothing.

It didn’t work, he’s not fast, it _didn’t work._

“No,” he whispers, staring harder at his hand as if he can force it to vibrate through sheer force of will. “Please, please.”

Beside him Barry stirs.

“Wally?” He mumbles, scrubbing a weary hand over his face.

Then those blue eyes see him awake, and they snap open fully, alert at once.

“Iris, Iris, wake up,” he whisper-shouts, shaking the redheaded woman. “Iris, sweetheart, wake up, Wally’s awake, Wally’s _awake!”_

Iris’s green eyes open slowly, blinking. “Wha- Bear?”

Then she sees Wally sitting up in bed.

“Wally!” She cries, sitting bolt upright in her chair, clearly restraining herself from wrapping her nephew in a hug.

“How you feeling, kid?” Barry says, and the relief on his face is clear, but his brow is still furrowed and Wally _knows_ the man is upset.

“It didn’t work,” Wally whispers in lieu of a reply, and Aunt Iris frowns.

“I’m not fast,” Wally says, staring at Aunt Iris, eyes wide and upset and tearing up. Barry’s presence feels a bit like the universe mocking him now, laughing at him and rubbing it in that the Flash was _right there,_ in front of him, and Wally couldn’t be further from what he’d wanted.

Aunt Iris looks torn, glancing between Barry and Wally, and Wally gets the distinct feeling that they had wanted to scold him, yell at him for being reckless and impulsive and endangering himself, but instead Aunt Iris shakes her head and pulls Wally into her arms gently, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “It’s alright, baby, it’s okay.”

And Wally feels the tears welling up in his eyes, sees Barry close his eyes as the corners of his lips turn down and a regretful frown mars his forehead.

Wally wonders what it would have been like if the experiment had worked.

* * *

Then Wally wakes one morning a week after he gets out of the hospital, and the first thought he has is, _“I’m starving.”_

The second thought he has is _"o_ _w,”_ because he gets out of bed, takes a step towards the door, and immediately crashes into the wall.

_What?_

Then Wally lifts a hand and, _holy shit, he’s vibrating!_

Wally stands up and slowly tries to make his way to his bedside table where his phone is, only to end up crashing headlong into his bed frame.

Ow. At least he’s within reach of his phone now.

He grabs for his phone and immediately calls Barry.

Then he sits down on the ground and resolves not to move until Barry gets here.

Then his room door opens and Barry’s standing right there, hair windswept.

Wally waves a sheepish hand before he sees the pizza box in Barry’s hand, then he just beelines straight for it.

And runs straight into the wall. Again.

“Come on, kid,” Barry says, laughing, and Wally pouts. “Eat up, and then I’ll show you how to control your powers.”

Wally grins sheepishly, and then he goes straight for the food.

“Oh man, I’m _starving,”_ Wally says between bites, and then he reaches for another slice and- oh. The box is empty.

Barry smiles, raising an eyebrow. “Impressive. Thirty-three point four seconds.”

Wally gapes.

If he can eat that fast and that much and still not be full, imagine what else he could try.

And he could probably run anywhere he wanted to and still be back in time for dinner.

_He could try all the pizza flavours in the world!_

When Wally looks at his words again that night it’s just one word. _Adorabil._

And Wally smiles, tracing those eight letters and feels the weight of worry dissolve into joy, because finally, finally his soulmate seems to have let go of their anger and grief.

A month or so later Wally meets Robin - _the_ Robin! The first child hero _ever!_ _He’s_ _so cool!!!-_ when Barry and Batman -holy cow, Batman is _terrifying,_ but Robin is so awesome that it kind of makes up for it- team up, and Uncle Barry drags him along for “field training”.

Wally can’t contain his excitement when he meets the Bats, and before Uncle Barry can even open his mouth Wally is pouncing on Robin, forcibly pulling the smaller boy into a hug.

“Dude,” he gushes, holding on tighter as Robin struggles and trying desperately to ignore the Batglare Batman has aimed his way. “You are so freaking cool, oh man, you were like the first kid hero ever and you’re _Batman’s_ protégé, holy cow, dude, you’re _awesome,_ teach me your skills.”

And Batman’s glare is intensifying now, but Robin’s stopped struggling and started laughing, so Wally thinks it’s a good start.

* * *

When Wally finds out that Robin is _Dick Grayson,_ the cute eleven year old adopted son of _Bruce Wayne,_ a part of him is stunned, and another part of him can’t believe he didn’t see it before.

Because Robin is Dick Grayson, and Robin is his best bro ever, and okay, even if he _wasn’t_ rich Rob would still be the coolest person _ever_ -except for maybe Uncle Barry- and wow, _everything makes sense now._

But he thinks even if Rob -Dick- weren’t who he was Wally would want a best bro like him anyway.

Dick is awesome, his partner-in-everything-but-crime, his pranking buddy, his best bro ever. He loves Robin, loves Dick Grayson in a way he doesn’t anyone else.

It’s amazing.

* * *

When Wally’s fourteen he starts learning advanced geography and he realises that theoretically he could run around the world. Uncle Barry’s already taught him how to run on water, and Wally can calculate the exact speed he needs for the surface tension to support his weight. If he brings along maybe fifty or so speedster calorie bars he should be more than fine, although Uncle Barry’s definitely going to ask why he needs so many.

But _science!_

Wally waits for a week when he has a long weekend -a holiday on Thursday and Friday, and then the weekend- and then he goes to Uncle B, the plan that he’d taken days to figure out spilling out of his mouth in a torrent of words that has Aunt Iris arching an eyebrow, trying futilely to parse out his sentences.

Uncle Barry just laughs and translates, grinning when Aunt Iris rolls her eyes and agrees, laughingly threatening to murder her husband if Wally didn’t come back in prime condition. _(“No, but seriously, Bear, I will hurt you if my baby gets injured.”)_

And Barry laughs off the threat, but it’s obvious that Aunt Iris terrifies him, and Wally thinks that’s probably smart, because Aunt Iris is definitely awesome enough to take down even the Flash.

It takes a while for Uncle Barry to gather up the sheer number of high calorie speedster energy bars that they’ll need for the trip, and then an even longer time for them to figure out how to carry them all without dropping them, but it works out in the end.

Then they’re in their costumes and out the door, and then they’re off.

They follow the route Wally’s plotted, the longest route he can find that takes them through all the landmarks Wally’s always wanted to see, and he grabs a box of macarons for Aunt Iris from Paris, a gift box of chocolate from Belgium, a box of mooncakes from China, a jumbo packet of kimchi from South Korea, the list goes on.

Wally knows that at the speed they travel at they definitely wouldn’t need eighty days to go around the world, but he expects that with the number of stops they make and sightseeing they do that it’d take them at least three days.

They make it back to the Allen household by ten thirty PM. On the same day.

Wally’s never been so utterly _disappointed._

He convinces Barry to go with him around the world two more times, going by an even longer route each time.

Each trip takes less than a day.

Life is a _lie,_ Wally thinks, pouting as he collapses into his bed that night, surrounded by souvenirs from every country he’d visited.

Hah. Eighty days? More like eighty hours. And that was if he went _slow._

* * *

Wally wakes up the next morning to a spike of panic that lances through him, and it’s a low, throbbing sensation in the back of his mind for the rest of the day, until it’s driven out of his thoughts by the slamming of the door downstairs and the whoosh of wind that is Uncle B using his powers in the house.

Wally stills for a moment, sitting upright on his bed and listening for any sign of him needing to suit up, but there aren’t any sounds of fighting or even any sounds of any conflict whatsoever, so he relaxes and picks up his chemistry textbook again, contenting himself with figuring out how much more he knew about science than his textbook included.

The panic that exists in the space between his lungs and ribcage ebbs and flows, rising and falling like the ocean tide, and then everything is shoved to the background when his bedroom door slams open and Dick rushes in, eyes wide and hurt and worried.

“Walls,” Dick breathes, barely above a whisper, and before Dick can say anything else Wally’s up and gathering the younger boy in his arms.

Wally rubs a comforting hand down Dick’s spine, and he’s not too sure what exactly’s happening but he knows that he’ll do anything to make his best friend feel better.

“Tell the Wallman what’s wrong,” falls from Wally’s lips before he even thinks through what he’s saying, and Dick’s surprised enough that he giggles, a half-hysterical, breathy laugh, and short-lived as it is, at least it’s still something other than distress.

Then Dick grabs for the hem of his shirt and lifts, exposing the words inked into his skin, and Wally can’t stop the stunned, “Dude,” that tumbles out. Showing someone your words isn’t exactly taboo or disapproved of, but it’s something that almost no one does unless they’re very, very certain that they trust the person they’re sharing that intimate part of themselves with.

Then Wally actually reads the words, and he feels his entire world tumble out from under him.

 _Life is pointless,_ the words read, and Wally knows enough about Dick to know that if there’s one person in the world that Dick cares about as much as he did his family, it’s his soulmate.

And Dick’s already lost his family. If he lost his soulmate too he’d be _destroyed._

“Walls, what do I do?” the younger boy asks, voice helpless and broken and Wally never thought he’d ever see Robin cry, but this isn’t Robin, is he? He’s Dick Grayson, son of Mary and John Grayson, and even if Robin was part of him, Robin wasn’t _him._ And Dick Grayson’s already lost so much.

“I can’t lose them, I can’t lose someone I love again. Not again. Please. What do I do, Wally?”

Dick’s voice is lost and torn and _wrecked, ruined,_ and Wally can’t let that happen to his best bro.

But how? Wally can’t exactly track down Dick’s soulmate and stop them from being suicidal. Wally can’t grab someone he can’t even find by the shoulders and shake them until they stop hurting Dick.

But Wally West would do _anything_ for Dick Grayson.

Wally would give the world to make sure that Dick was okay.

Then the words change. _“Life is pointless”_ gives way to _“make sure he’s okay”,_ and Wally can’t help but marvel at the similarity those words had to his thoughts.

Huh. They were really, _really_ similar. Almost _too_ similar.

Dick’s eyes lock onto his words too, and Wally knows the younger boy has seen the change as well.

“Wally,” he begins, and there’s a strange lilt, a rough accent to his voice that Wally thinks shouldn’t sound as familiar as it does.

 _“Ce?”_ Dick asks, and Wally’s brain translates the Romani before he even realises it’s not English.

Wait. Romani. Dick’s Romani, he almost forgot!

Romani, just like his words have always been. Romani, Wally’s soulmate’s first language.

His soulmate, who used to dream of flying. His soulmate, who grieved and mourned and broke four years ago. And Dick, who was from one of the world’s greatest trapeze families. Dick, who lost everything that night four years ago when the cables were cut.

Dick, whose words echoed Wally’s thoughts.

“I-” Wally starts, and before he’s even fully thought things through his fingers are gripping his shirt and he’s yanking the concealing fabric over his head, exposing his words to Dick’s wide, startled eyes.

Then Wally realises that he hasn’t had the chance to look at his words today, and when he looks down he sees the sentence that cements his guesses.

He sees Dick’s blue, blue eyes focusing on those foreign letters, sees those eyes sharpen and focus and that mouth fall open in shock.

 _“Ne wesztinipe nipo papal_ _,”_ Dick reads, soft and reverent and so musical, and Wally’s never heard the Romani language spoken aloud so fluently, so lyrical and beautiful, and Wally thinks, _“Yeah, it fits.”_

“I can’t lose-” Dick translates, and Wally can’t help the smile that grows across his cheeks.

“Someone I love again,” he completes, and Wally sees Dick’s eyes _(blue, so blue, deep and dark and beautiful, perfect)_ snap up to meet his, and Wally sees the exact moment the puzzle pieces fall in place.

**Author's Note:**

> [My Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/_dreamdweller/)  
>  Pop over and say hi!


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